GENERATIONS-OLD hospital wards at Scarborough General are set to be replaced in a major redevelopment.

Known as Nightingale wards, after Florence Nightingale, rooms which have long avenues of beds will be replaced with smaller wards, each with a handful of beds.

Robert Crawford, chief executive of the Scarborough and North-East Yorkshire NHS Trust, said in the new annual plan that "the coming year will see major challenges facing the trust and the health community in general".

It is hoped the multi-million pound development of wards, a new short-stay surgical ward, and other facilities at the General, will see the number of cancelled operations fall and all acute admissions dealt with.

"The impact of this development should be increasingly felt and provide real opportunities for improving patient care," said Mr Crawford.

In addition, the trust will explore the development needs of community hospitals at Whitby and Malton.

The trust has already applied to set up a medical school at Scarborough General, as a joint venture between the universities of York and Hull.

Mr Crawford said: "If successful, it will mean that a number of medical students will be accommodated within the trust for training".

Some £95,000 is to be spent on a new orthodontic suite at Scarborough and the go-ahead is recommended to replace the CT scanner used for three-dimensional images of internal organs of patients.